Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire

Suzanne Collins

Published 2009

American Sci Fi

⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5

I really like this plot, Catching Fire, the second book inThe Hunger Games trilogy.  But, oh, how I wish George Orwell or Franz Kafka or Émile Zola wrote it!  (I was actually thinking about this while I was reading it.) 

Imagine the depth of the language and vocabulary and the force of the narrative if it was delivered by one of the aforementioned. Catching Fire is written for a juvenile or young adult audience, and the action and emotion are either simplified or limited.  It almost feels mechanical, and I am left wanting so much more from the story. 

Here is just one part that I feel a little snarky about:

Katniss, our heroine, often struggles with her thoughts about Peetr, and at one point she thinks about her feelings for him, over his kisses.

She contemplates:

This time, there is nothing but us to interrupt us.  And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking.  The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being.  Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater.  I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

In the margin I added my personal notation: "Blah! Such awful writing!  True love is not what you feel in a kiss."  (That is to assume the author wants the reader to believe this is the beginning of true love.  I don't know, yet.)

But I still like it, and I am going to finish the trilogy with Mockingjay.  Before I read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I was familiar with the plots because I saw both of the movies.  Of course, the film version is a lot different from the book, but I knew what to expect, to some degree.  However, there is no film version for Mockingjay, yet, so finally I will read this book in ignorance, which I prefer. 

Have you read The Hunger Games trilogy?  If so, what did you think about the writing style?  Am I being too hard on Collins considering this is young adult fiction?